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Today’s guest is an entrepreneur, investor, author, and mentor every German entrepreneur looks up to. He founded alando, which was acquired by ebay,  then ran ebay Germany for 7 years. 

He’s a Member of the Board of Bahlsen, Co-founder of betterplace.org, Co-Founder and Lecturer at UNTERNEHMERSCHULE from ESCP Europe and so much more. Most importantly, he’s just a great human being who played a significant role in turning Berlin into a startup hotspot. 

Joerg Rheinboldt is Managing Director APX - a joint venture between Axel Springer and Porsche investing in early-stage startups from around the world. 

In this episode, we talk about his experience in building and growing startups as an entrepreneur and as an investor, his investment strategy, and his views on the startup ecosystem in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What you’ll learn about:

1. His experience with startups from opposite perspectives
2. APX’s investments in teams with ideas
3. How the pandemic impacted APX and the VC realm
4. Common mistakes startups make on the venture path 
5. What APX looks for in a team to invest in
6. Mental Mining: APX’s mental health programme

APX is also one of the few who has taken a stance and acted on startup founders' mental health. Joerg discusses APX’s approach to equipping these people with the skills needed to maintain a healthy balance. He discusses how being busy is the new stupid and how imperative it is to own your time.

APX provides much needed support to startups with big ideas. If your business is just starting out and you want to know how to go about seeking out a VC or to approach APX, this episode will be your roadmap to success. A very captivating interview, thank you Joerg Rheinboldt!

Enjoy the show and happy listening!

For detailed show notes and relevant links, visit www.stunandawe.com

If you want to accelerate traction, hit the growth stage, and upgrade your scaling skills, check out our Growth Leap online course. It’s a step-by-step guide to design your tech startup for high performance and impact. It’s packed with actionable and proven frameworks and tools to improve your startups performance, from better customer acquisition to clear prioritization and more productive meetings.

Learn more here: https://academy.stunandawe.com

Support the show

• Do you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast or feedback to share? Leave me a message here.
• You'll find all the show notes, transcripts, and past guests at stunandawe.com
• Up your growth game with our hands-on Growth Marketing Course
• For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
• Support the show on Patreon

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Send us Fan Mail

Notion is shaping the work-from-home revolution, by offering an application that simplifies and declutters your digital home office. Think of it as an all-in-one workspace for notes, docs, wikis, projects, and collaboration. 

The company is on the fast-track to becoming the new normal and its recent presence expansion in EMEA and APAC is a testament to this. 

Here to discuss the company’s growth and how he is pioneering its development in the region is General Manager EMEA Robbie O’Connor, whose career spans across the globe’s most prominent tech companies: Microsoft, Google, Dropbox, and Asana.

In this episode we discuss how to take a Series B company and expand it across international boundaries, the elements a startup needs to go global, how Notion drives growth, Robbie’s personal favourite frameworks and the secret ingredients to building high-performing teams. 

What you’ll learn

• Robbie’s background and experience 
• His experience in rapid growth of tech companies, what other companies can do to follow suit.
• How to prepare your startup for international growth
• How to define your vision and clear objectives
• His perspective of the EMEA market.
• How to stay relevant and competitive 
• How to overcome growth challenges in your career

Getting your company from zero to hero has never had a clearer path thanks to Robbie O’Connor’s insights, tips, tricks, trials and tribulations. 

The most impactful tools for learning come from other people’s experience. If ever there was a time to unpack an industry leader’s career, this podcast is your blueprint. 

A very interesting and insightful interview, thank you Robbie O’Connor! Happy listening!

For detailed show notes and relevant links, visit www.stunandawe.com

If you want to accelerate traction, hit the growth stage, and upgrade your scaling skills, check out our Growth Leap online course. It’s a step-by-step guide to design your tech startup for high performance and impact. It’s packed with actionable and proven frameworks and tools to improve your startups performance, from better customer acquisition to clear prioritization and more productive meetings.

Learn more here: https://academy.stunandawe.com

Support the show

• Do you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast or feedback to share? Leave me a message here.
• You'll find all the show notes, transcripts, and past guests at stunandawe.com
• Up your growth game with our hands-on Growth Marketing Course
• For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
• Support the show on Patreon

Follow us:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Send us Fan Mail

Isn’t there a fundamental conflict between running a business and solving global problems? Our guest today doesn’t think so. He believes that designing innovative partnerships can accelerate the development of sustainable businesses.
 
Nadim Choucair is Founder of 2030 Cabinet, an impact-oriented ecosystem builder and partnership architect. His goal: to enable sustainable innovation using the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Nadim also coordinates the UN Global Goals Jam in Germany. The Jam is a two-day design sprint held in over 90 cities around the world, during which multidisciplinary teams work out solutions for real world problems. 

In today’s episode, we go all in on sustainability and business. We touch on a couple of themes, such as: 

• How to make your startup more sustainable using the SDGs framework
• Enabling innovation to advance the SDGs
• Running 2-day design sprints to solve global challenges
• Moving from human-centered to life-centered design
• The need for different incentives to drive entrepreneurs and businesses
• Lean approaches to measuring your startup impact, and a lot more. 
  
  

If you want to build a meaningful tech startup that will make a positive impact, that’s the right episode for you.

For detailed show notes and relevant links, visit www.stunandawe.com

If you want to accelerate traction, hit the growth stage, and upgrade your scaling skills, check out our Growth Leap online course. It’s a step-by-step guide to design your tech startup for high performance and impact. It’s packed with actionable and proven frameworks and tools to improve your startups performance, from better customer acquisition to clear prioritization and more productive meetings.

Learn more here: https://growth.stunandawe.com/course 

Support the show

• Do you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast or feedback to share? Leave me a message here.
• You'll find all the show notes, transcripts, and past guests at stunandawe.com
• Up your growth game with our hands-on Growth Marketing Course
• For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
• Support the show on Patreon

Follow us:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Send us Fan Mail

If you’re interested in building a startup that works like clockwork, you need to listen to our guest today. He’s done it, and he’s done pretty much everything right. He co-founded Feedbackpanda.com, a SaaS startup and went from launch to selling it in just under two years. Arvid Kahl is an entrepreneur, investor, author, software engineer, and bootstrapped startup expert. He’s the author of the book Zero to Sold: How to Start, Run, and Sell a Bootstrapped Business and he’s busy writing a second one. 

We talk about what to do to build a sellable company, his approach to automation, how to stay in touch with end users, how he made build or buy decisions, his secret to onboarding employees quickly, and his take on founders’ mental health and bootstrapping. It was such a fun and insightful interview. Enjoy!

We cover:

• Arvid’s background and what he’s been up to since selling his startup
• What problem Arvid and his partner faced that led to the launch of FeebackPanda
• The simple marketing strategy that generated a constant influx of customers
• How Arvid avoided previous product validation mistakes
• The resources and frameworks that helped Arvid built an automated and sellable bootstrapped startup
• Arvid’s advice to allow engineers to do coding deep work without losing touch with the end users
• The automations Arvid put in place  to increase effectiveness and productivity 
• How Arvid made made or buy decisions while developing his product
• The biggest hiring mistake Arvid made
• Arvid’s secret to hire and get people up and running in a matter of hours 
• Arvid documented his processes
• The habit you need to acquire to
• Why Arvid prefers startups who ride a sustainable linear curve instead of a hockey stick

For detailed show notes and relevant links, visit www.stunandawe.com

If you want to accelerate traction, hit the growth stage, and upgrade your scaling skills, check out our Growth Leap online course. It’s a step-by-step guide to design your tech startup for high performance and impact. It’s packed with actionable and proven frameworks and tools to improve your startups performance, from better customer acquisition to clear prioritization and more productive meetings.

Learn more here: https://growth.stunandawe.com/course 

Support the show

• Do you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast or feedback to share? Leave me a message here.
• You'll find all the show notes, transcripts, and past guests at stunandawe.com
• Up your growth game with our hands-on Growth Marketing Course
• For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
• Support the show on Patreon

Follow us:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Send us Fan Mail

If you don’t own any Bitcoins yet, this episode is for you. We talk to Dave Pouliot, Founder and CEO of Coinmiles, a Montreal-based startup that gives you free Bitcoins when you shop online. Dave is a former detective and lawyer turned tech startup founder. He’s extremely authentic. He’s passionate about cryptocurrency and the positive impact it can have in our society. Dave shares his experience and practical advice on how to raise money, build a tech startup with a non-tech background, hire engineers, and how to survive an app launch in the middle of a pandemic.

We talk about:

• What’s Coinmiles’s offering 
• Coimiles’s business model
• How Coinmiles complied with regulation on Bitcoins 
• Coinmiles’s go-to-market strategy 
• Dave’s journey from being a detective cop to founding Bitcoin Startup
• Dave’s advice on fundraising 
• What investors looked into while investing in Coinmiles
• How Dave managed to get first prototype without tech background
• Dave’s team building strategy 
• Dave’s approach to manage remote and distributed team 
• Dave’s experience on launching app in pandemic times 
• Coinmiles’s incredibly effective customer acquisition strategy 
• What does Bitocoin mean for average consumer according to Dave 
• The Cryptocurrency’s future from Dave’s prospective 
• How does Dave measure success at Coinmiles 
• Dave’s advice on being an entrepreneur
• Coinmiles’s growth plans 
• Dave’s key takeaways from his journey and advice to young entrepreneurs 

For detailed show notes and relevant links, visit www.stunandawe.com 

If you want to accelerate traction, hit the growth stage, and upgrade your scaling skills, check out our Growth Leap online course. It’s a step-by-step guide to design your tech startup for high performance and impact. It’s packed with actionable and proven frameworks and tools to improve your startups performance, from better customer acquisition to clear prioritization and more productive meetings.

Learn more here: https://growth.stunandawe.com/course 

Support the show

• Do you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast or feedback to share? Leave me a message here.
• You'll find all the show notes, transcripts, and past guests at stunandawe.com
• Up your growth game with our hands-on Growth Marketing Course
• For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
• Support the show on Patreon

Follow us:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Send us Fan Mail

Our guest today isn’t afraid of challenges. She founded a startup to take on not one, but two sustainability problems. Alina Bassi is Founder and CEO of Kleiderly, a Berlin-based startup that aims to reduce the fashion footprint and the usage of oil based plastic by replacing it with its patent-pending sustainable plastic alternative. She’s a Google for Startups Female Founder alumni, she recently joined the Forbes 30 under 30 and holds a Masters in Chemical Engineering. She’s converted coffee into biofuel, and she just launched Tech in Color. 

We talk about Kleiderly’s business model, her approach to prioritization, the metrics she uses to measure progress, and what’s the future of the fashion industry. 

We talk about:

• Why Alina decided to launch Kleiderly and what it's all about
• Kleiderly's supply chain
• Keiderly's target and customer acquisition strategy 
• The impact of the circular economy on fashion brands 
• Kleiderly's current production operations and future plans
• Alina's funding strategy and the challenges she's faced
• Alina’s experience in going from zero to 7 employees 
• How putting your team members in the deep end can be a great path to growth
• How Alina prioritizes and set goals to align her team and drive progress
• What metrics she uses to measure success
• Alina's view on what is missing for us to accelerate the change towards a more sustainable world
• Alina's experience as a female founder and how the Google Female Founder Program helped her
• And more

For detailed show notes and relevant links, visit www.stunandawe.com 

If you want to accelerate traction, hit the growth stage, and upgrade your scaling skills, check out our Growth Leap online course. It’s a step-by-step guide to design your tech startup for high performance and impact. It’s packed with actionable and proven frameworks and tools to improve your startups performance, from better customer acquisition to clear prioritization and more productive meetings.

Learn more here: https://growth.stunandawe.com/course 

Support the show

• Do you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast or feedback to share? Leave me a message here.
• You'll find all the show notes, transcripts, and past guests at stunandawe.com
• Up your growth game with our hands-on Growth Marketing Course
• For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
• Support the show on Patreon

Follow us:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Send us Fan Mail

Today’s guest made it his mission to reduce online misinformation & abusive content from the internet. Dhruv Ghulati is Founder and CEO of Factmata, a London-based tech startup who uses unique algorithms to score and classify content. Since 2017 he has raised 3.5 million from the likes of Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, but also from the Founders of Zynga, Brightmail, Twitter, and Craigslist, to name a few.

He’s building an AI to bring more truth to the world. Dhruv has a truly outstanding experience. We talk about how he went from investment banking to launching his own company, traction, fund raising, and we cover some of the mistakes he made along the way.

We talk about:

• Factmata’s Unique Selling Proposition
• Dhurv’s path from investment banking to founding AI-powered startup
• How Dhruv balanced impact and profitability
• Factmata’s incredibly effective customer acquisition strategy
• Some early mistakes Dhruv made with go-to-market strategy
• Dhruv’s advice on fundraising and the story about how he bring investors like Mark Cuban, Mark Pincus, Founder of Zynga, Sunil Paul, Founder of Brightmail, Biz Stone, Co-founder of Twitter, Craig Newmark, Founder of Craigslist
• How Factmata approached challenges such as algorithmic biases
• Dhruv’s top mistakes as a first-time tech startup founder
• His ideal employee profile

For detailed show notes and relevant links, visit www.stunandawe.com 

If you want to accelerate traction, hit the growth stage, and upgrade your skills, check out our Growth Leap online course. It’s a step-by-step guide to design your tech startup for high performance and impact. It’s packed with actionable and proven frameworks and tools to improve your startups performance, from better customer acquisition to clear prioritization and more productive meetings.

Learn more here: https://growth.stunandawe.com/course 

Support the show

• Do you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast or feedback to share? Leave me a message here.
• You'll find all the show notes, transcripts, and past guests at stunandawe.com
• Up your growth game with our hands-on Growth Marketing Course
• For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
• Support the show on Patreon

Follow us:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode, our guest wants to bring transparency to the environmental impact of our online shopping. Marissa Liu is Co-Founder of Neutral, a browser extension that allows users to understand and offset the CO2 emissions generated by the products they buy online. The startup is on a roll. Neutral has been selected by the Mozilla Builders Incubator and was recently featured in Fast Company. 

We talk about:

• Neutral’s unique selling proposition and business model
• The challenges of feature prioritization in product development
• Finding product/market fit
• What’s the company’s vision and true north
• The importance of rapid feedback loops
• Neutral’s key metrics to measure impact and progress 
• The most challenging part of building a startup 
• Neutral’s approach to user feedback 
• Marissa's view on the progress of women in tech

For detailed show notes and relevant links, visit www.stunandawe.com 

If you want to accelerate traction, hit the growth stage, and upgrade your scaling skills, check out our Growth Leap online course. It’s a step-by-step guide to design your tech startup for high performance and impact. It’s packed with actionable and proven frameworks and tools to improve your startups performance, from better customer acquisition to clear prioritization and more productive meetings.

Learn more here: https://growth.stunandawe.com/course 

Support the show

• Do you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast or feedback to share? Leave me a message here.
• You'll find all the show notes, transcripts, and past guests at stunandawe.com
• Up your growth game with our hands-on Growth Marketing Course
• For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
• Support the show on Patreon

Follow us:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Send us Fan Mail

Today we look into how you can finance your startup without losing your shirt and your conscience. Julia Profeta Johansson is Co-founder and Chief Investment Officer at Conscious Growth, a Berlin-based company that offers  founder-friendly, non-dilutive lending. She’s seen it all in finance, having worked in investment banking, private equity, VC, and impact investing. 

We talk about: 

• Smarter ways to finance your tech startup growth with revenue-based financing
• Their customer acquisition strategy to generate solid traction
• The problems with VC funding
• Her strategy to use technology, business and investments to generate social and environmental impact.
• Tools that you can use to measure the impact of your tech startup
• How women are doing in tech and business

For detailed show notes and relevant links, visit www.stunandawe.com 

If you want to accelerate traction, hit the growth stage, and upgrade your scaling skills, check out our Growth Leap online course. It’s a step-by-step guide to design your tech startup for high performance and impact. It’s packed with actionable and proven frameworks and tools to improve your startups performance, from better customer acquisition to clear prioritization and more productive meetings.

Learn more here: https://growth.stunandawe.com/course 

Support the show

• Do you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast or feedback to share? Leave me a message here.
• You'll find all the show notes, transcripts, and past guests at stunandawe.com
• Up your growth game with our hands-on Growth Marketing Course
• For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
• Support the show on Patreon

Follow us:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode, we talk to a serial entrepreneur who’s launched 6 startups and went through a few successful exits. Joseph Fung is Founder and CEO of Kiite a sales enablement software and of Uvaro, an Online Tech Sales Training program. 

He has lots of experience and shares a ton of advice on:

• Joseph’s secrets to gain traction, find product market fit, and acquire customers
• The revolution that’s happening right now in tech sales
• Kiite's sales and marketing strategy
• What you need to be successful in sales today
• Joseph's secret weapon to scale startups
• What Joseph recommend early-stage startups to do as early as possible
• The three components of a startup culture
• Joseph's perspective on the startup CEO
• The single biggest challenge for entrepreneurs
• What kind of hires should early-stage startups look for and how to grow people
• How to build and grow the right team 
• The importance of having a clear True North or positioning

For detailed show notes and relevant links, visit www.stunandawe.com 

If you want to accelerate traction, hit the growth stage, and upgrade your scaling skills, check out our Growth Leap online course. It’s a step-by-step guide to design your tech startup for high performance and impact. It’s packed with actionable and proven frameworks and tools to improve your startups performance, from better customer acquisition to clear prioritization and more productive meetings.

Learn more here: https://growth.stunandawe.com/course 

Support the show

• Do you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast or feedback to share? Leave me a message here.
• You'll find all the show notes, transcripts, and past guests at stunandawe.com
• Up your growth game with our hands-on Growth Marketing Course
• For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
• Support the show on Patreon

Follow us:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter